The Village Institutes (Koy Enstituleri) were set up in the mid- twentieth century to provide basic education for Turkish villagers in farming, industry, culture and literacy. Based on the communal model, they were the kind of places where everyone worked for one another under the tutelage of the teachers (ogretmen). However the scheme attracted considerable criticism, especially from those sectors of Turkish society who were interested in sustaining the political status quo - the hierarchical model dating back to the Ottoman period. They considered the Village Institutes to be hotbeds of communism, dedicated to overthrowing the state, Ali Adnan Ozgur's film tells the story of one such institute, and how it tries to survive repeated attacks from the local military commandant (Bertan Dirikolu) and his village acolytes. The teacher Kemal (Erkan Can) is arrested for peddling allegedly subversive material, and taken to court in Ankara on a trumped-up charge. The film shows how the members of the Institute work for one another, as well as taking care of a local gypsy girl (Muge Boz), who is wanted by the local villagers in the belief that she and her grandmother have been responsible for an outbreak of malaria. It is no coincidence that TOPRAGIN COCUKLARI should have been released in 2012: director Ozgur is clearly interested in making a comment on the shortcomings of contemporary Turkish society - especially the education system, where there are insufficient teachers and learners seldom have the chance to develop thinking abilities for themselves. The film contains a rather spurious love-story between Cevher (Ukuk Bayraktar) and Aybike (Turku Turan) that provides the pretext for a tragic denouement, but it is nonetheless a sincere attempt to remind audiences of an important aspect of Turkish history.
2 Reviews
Bullies transform into heroes in countries where independent education is not appreciated.
elsinefilo2 June 2013
*They want to open schools exploiting the nation and breaking down the social life.They want to raise spineless men at these schools, exalt and arm those men with intellect.As for the others, they want to make them their servants.Yet, only an active and coordinated workforce would shape up the future generations.This is why we established the Village Institutes.And it is why they closed them down.
**Don't bow down to cringe in front of any authority you just see. Tell the ones you don't have faith in! Tell them; I don't believe in you... (From the voice-over)
Toprağın Çocukları (The Children of the Land) is the story of 'Turkish village institutes'. Village institutes were mostly boarding schools that were set up in and around the villages. These schools would offer mixed sex education in boarding schools and they were operational between 1940 and 1954. At that time the literacy rate was extremely law and there were few schools in rural areas so the institutes were of vital importance to train villagers to get the hang of modern agriculture, better construction and more productive animal husbandry. The schools were the paragons of equality of educational opportunity. The institutes were supposed to train teachers for each village and send them back to form new village schools so the teachers would pay it forward. Unfortunately, the institutes had always been the target of anti-secularist reactionary groups. Giving co-ed education in boarding schools were unacceptable for hard-line conservatives. To promote free thinking, the students were required to read different books covering views from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, there had already been a serious fear of the Soviet Union at the time. The movement to liberate villagers, to make them dependent on only each other, to make independent, modern women out of simple village girls was a staunch enemy of the anti-socialist political Islam.
Ali Adnan Özgür's directorial debut is trying to give out a message in this film. Today's socialists should know about these schools very well. Any Turk, who at least once read some left-wing writers should know a thing or two about these schools and why they were repeatedly attacked and were forced to shut down in the end but there is a vast majority who still hasn't the faintest inkling of what these schools were all about. A lot of people still think that these schools were just a haven of 'debauched communism.' You can probably find a lot of negative things to say about this movie if you just look at it from an artistic window. The voice-over sounds blatantly didactic, which in return makes the script feel loosely packed. The most important part of the movie- why these schools were founded and why they should been protected- again was treated in the voice-over gives this movie a documentary/reenactment touch. With that in mind, let us not forget nobody has ever tried to make a movie out of village institutes before and this movie was made on a tight budget.
In spite of its flaws, Özgür's movie comes at a time on which our country faces a new educational system where we have neither enough teachers nor adequate schools, where the students are not required to analyse but just follow. Let this movie be a reminder of an uncompromising socialist stand against injustice, intolerance and inequality as the children of this land were a bunch of communists in the past, today they are a 'handful of looters'.
**Don't bow down to cringe in front of any authority you just see. Tell the ones you don't have faith in! Tell them; I don't believe in you... (From the voice-over)
Toprağın Çocukları (The Children of the Land) is the story of 'Turkish village institutes'. Village institutes were mostly boarding schools that were set up in and around the villages. These schools would offer mixed sex education in boarding schools and they were operational between 1940 and 1954. At that time the literacy rate was extremely law and there were few schools in rural areas so the institutes were of vital importance to train villagers to get the hang of modern agriculture, better construction and more productive animal husbandry. The schools were the paragons of equality of educational opportunity. The institutes were supposed to train teachers for each village and send them back to form new village schools so the teachers would pay it forward. Unfortunately, the institutes had always been the target of anti-secularist reactionary groups. Giving co-ed education in boarding schools were unacceptable for hard-line conservatives. To promote free thinking, the students were required to read different books covering views from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, there had already been a serious fear of the Soviet Union at the time. The movement to liberate villagers, to make them dependent on only each other, to make independent, modern women out of simple village girls was a staunch enemy of the anti-socialist political Islam.
Ali Adnan Özgür's directorial debut is trying to give out a message in this film. Today's socialists should know about these schools very well. Any Turk, who at least once read some left-wing writers should know a thing or two about these schools and why they were repeatedly attacked and were forced to shut down in the end but there is a vast majority who still hasn't the faintest inkling of what these schools were all about. A lot of people still think that these schools were just a haven of 'debauched communism.' You can probably find a lot of negative things to say about this movie if you just look at it from an artistic window. The voice-over sounds blatantly didactic, which in return makes the script feel loosely packed. The most important part of the movie- why these schools were founded and why they should been protected- again was treated in the voice-over gives this movie a documentary/reenactment touch. With that in mind, let us not forget nobody has ever tried to make a movie out of village institutes before and this movie was made on a tight budget.
In spite of its flaws, Özgür's movie comes at a time on which our country faces a new educational system where we have neither enough teachers nor adequate schools, where the students are not required to analyse but just follow. Let this movie be a reminder of an uncompromising socialist stand against injustice, intolerance and inequality as the children of this land were a bunch of communists in the past, today they are a 'handful of looters'.
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